Following the 2009 National Academy Committee report “Observing the Weather and Climate from the Ground Up: A Nationwide Network of Networks” and the subsequent Thermodynamic Profiling Technologies workshop (TPT) in 2011, a set of recommendations were put forward for operational lidar network in the US. One of the lidar network recommended network was part of the existing operational national Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) operated by National Weather Service (NWS) and Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). This ASOS network is operational, recently upgraded with low-power profiling lidars (known as ceilometers) and thus the archiving of the lidar profile data was thought of to be the “low hanging fruit” and relatively easily achievable. Subsequent to the TPT recommendation, NOAA – through the NWS Office of Science and Technology (OST) funded a study to advise the agency on the ceilometer instrument’s capability, data structure, and ways of implementing the data archiving. We (Howard University and UMBC, in collaboration with NWS Sterling Field Support Center (SFSC)) have been researching on what steps are needed for implementation of a data archiving mechanism and demonstrate application of the data to several atmospheric problems. We will report on progress to date, problems and prospects of this future lidar network. Example of the data and selected case studies and challenges as wll as lessons learned will be discussed.